Pharmacists have defended their commitment to offering new services in response to PSNC chief executive Sue Sharpe blaming "half-hearted" contractors for the "sluggish" development of service-based funding.

Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich LPC chair Bipin Patel said commissioners should not use the number of MURs delivered as a measure of pharmacists' commitment to take on services, after Ms Sharpe pointed to an average of 170 MURs per pharmacy as proof that contractors were underperforming.

Commissioners should focus on the quality of the MURs delivered, not the quantity, Mr Patel told C+D in response to Ms Sharpe's speech at the LPC conference in London earlier this month (November 5).

PSNC chief executive Sue Sharpe blamed "half-hearted" contractors for the "sluggish" development of  service-based funding at the LPC conference on November 5	More from the LPC conference Fighting to get free from funding 'straitjacket' Pharmacy gets £1.5m research boost from DH LPCs call for research levy on contractors
	"I might be doing [a smaller] number of MURs, but mine might be specifically targeted," he said.

Tees LPC chair Jay Badenhorst agreed with Ms Sharpe that there was "a lack of engagement from pharmacy" with the drive towards expanding services but said it was due to a lack of funding.

"I do think some people need encouragement but they generally don't want to do things because a lot of money has been taken away from them," he told C+D.

Ms Sharpe said she appreciated that lack of funding for pharmacy services was one reason for the slow uptake, but the sector needed to "get behind a commitment to deliver services" if it wanted more money.

"There's a chicken and egg issue about this and large numbers of pharmacists have been fairly ambivalent about the shift towards services," she told the conference.

The sector had been "fairly half-hearted" about delivering new services and this made it hard for the negotiating body to argue for pharmacy to take on any more, Ms Sharpe said.

"PSNC would not be doing its job unless it was doing its part to develop a credible service-based platform with consistent delivery, which means every pharmacy does it," she added.

At this month's C+D Senate (November 6), Raj Jain, pharmacist at WR Evans Chemist Ltd t/a Manor Pharmacy, said low attendance at LPC meetings was a barrier to developing pharmacy services.

"It's only 50 per cent, maybe less, of the pharmacies on your patch, so it makes setting up a service difficult," he said.

Last month, Ms Sharpe warned the Avicenna conference that the government would look to cut pharmacy numbers unless the sector could prove its worth through services.

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